Data on Hard Drives - How is it stored

Find out how is data stored and organized on a drive:

If you’ve ever assembled a computer, you must have probably seen a hard disk. For those of you who haven’t, hard disk comes in a rectangular shaped case with a magnetic tape. All the data which is modified or written gets stored on that magnetic tape. The magnetic coating on the platter contains the data that you store, and in case on man handling the hard disk, there might be a loss of data. In case the magnetic coating is damaged in a small proportion, you might have a good chance of recovering lost data. In case the magnetic coating is lost to a large extent, data recovery becomes really difficult. One needs to know that information bits are magnetically stored on a hard drive.

When your hard disk is formatted, you will notice concentric boundaries of circles, each defining their space. It is much like your dart board, in case you need a visual example. There are millions of small sectors which divide the hard disk, and each sector has a capacity of storing 512 bytes of information, or 256 characters for that matter. The drive is fragmented into really small clusters, and each cluster has the ability to contain 64 such sectors. Thus, every single time you want to write a piece of data and store it on your PC, your OS allocates one cluster for storing that amount of data. Even if your information is worth two bytes, your operating system allocates about thirty two thousand bytes of space for it. This cluster will remain until you delete your file completely from your computer, and that includes deleting it out of recycle bin as well.

At certain times, you might have what is known in layman’s terms as ‘hard disk crash’. It basically happens due to a lot of factors, out of which some of the most common ones are:

1. Platters: Hard drive platter is rotated with the aid of an electric motor. The velocity is mentioned in RPM (rotations/minute) and higher the RPM, higher the capacity of the hard drive to write the data faster. Direct contact with the platter causes damage, since it contains a magnetic film which can get damaged.

2. Heads: At times when there are no changes being made, i.e. no data is being added, modified or deleted, the head is at a rest position. This head is similar to your audio and video cassette head. If it loses contact, data writing becomes difficult.

3. PCB: This refers to the printed circuit board. These are the parts that control and run your hard disk. Fluids and fire when in contact with the PCB, damage it.